The Real Lance Brown

Michael at B-Sides Narrative posted this tweet after I helped him work out an issue with the way his WordPress blog posts were being handled by Facebook:

@freeWPadvice You're a rock star, man. The work you did on my template fixed the Facebook-sharing problem. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

3/10/2011 8:48 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@BSidesNarrative

Michael

I help people out with WordPress for free on Twitter at @freeWPadvice. Send me a message there if you need help, and I might be able to get you squared away just like Michael!

From Robin Mallery of HeartMatters:

Lance has provided unmatched attention to detail during the building of my website, not only from a technical perspective but also content related. He is witty, charming, and quite bright. Lance’s ideas are out of the box, he drinks a lot of Coke, and does not like banana bread.

-from “Robin Recommends…Freelance Lance”

Kudos for my eagle-eye editing from “serial entrepreneur” Allen Oelschlaeger:

“Honestly, I’ve never received more thoughtful and useful feedback on my copy than this. Thanks.”

A new testimonial, fresh from my inbox:

“You’ve been a great writing coach.”

-long-time client Shawn Tuttle (of Project Simplify and The Natural Professional)

A Recommendation from Ruth Schwartz of High Performance Advocates, as posted on LinkedIn:

“Lance started editing articles that I was writing for my (soon to be) blog and web pages. I found him exacting and provocative. He challenged my ideas and helped to make my writing and my ideas better. He loves writing and comes to this job with great passion and integrity. Then he built my website. He has a spontaneous understanding of what is necessary and now to make things work online. He was so proficient and fair that we have partnered to bring website challenged business owners the websites they need in this century – quickly, inexpensively and self managed. He will go far and I want to be there when he does.”  -February 14, 2009

Top qualities: Great Results, High Integrity, Creative

Editing is an important part of writing, and my experience and skill as an editor is an important part of my strength as a writer.

I have edited several newsletters over the past 14 years. One such newsletter was News from the Internet Renaissance, the e-mail newsletter for the company I co-founded, PeoplesForum.com. For over a year from 2000-2002, we had a paid writer who prepared that newsletter, while I served as editor.

That writer, Adam Graham, wrote about his experience during that time. Here is an excerpt:

“I thought it was a dream job. I would be writing for a living rather than cooking curly fries. Little did I know how demanding the job would be. Lance Brown was a perfectionist when it came to every aspect of writing. I often found myself resenting what I perceived as “nitpicking”. However, in retrospect, I look at Lance, the way people in my grandfather’s generation would look at their old Army Sergeants. Simply put, Lance gave me a few good kicks in the pants and in the process helped make me a better writer.”

You can read his full thoughts here, about halfway down the page.

And make sure you read this other testimonial from Shawn Tuttle, about my writing and editing work in the past year for Project Simplify.

For the past year, I’ve been working as a consultant-of-all-trades for Project Simplify, a business simplification services company. My duties have included website development, copywriting and editing, business and marketing consulting, and quite a bit more. (You can see examples of my work here.)

Here is a note about my work from Project Simplify’s founder, Shawn Tuttle.

Lance Brown has been applying his diverse writing skills to my business, Project Simplify in several different capacities. He has written copy for my website, while maintaining the tone of my writing. He has contributed to the copy of all my newsletters to date, and has, on occasion, contributed the featured article. I’ve been impressed by his prolific and creative ideas that are congruent with my mission, even though the subject was new to him when we began working together.

Working with Lance for the past year has had a great influence on my own writing as well. In his work as editor of my newsletter and articles, I’ve relied on his eagle eye to catch grammatical errors, his analytical skills to flag those sentences (and paragraphs!) that don’t quite convey their intended meaning, and his creativity to get me out of a jam when I get stuck.

While I am so appreciative for all his assistance to Project Simplify, I also see that his writing talents are ready to support him as a writer in his own right. I’ve no doubt he’ll produce fabulous works of art given the opportunity!

Shawn Tuttle
Founder, Project Simplify

She also wrote this blog post about me, where she called me “an amazingly diversely talented individual” – my favorite compliment of 2006. :-)